Incense in The Wind: October 2021

Tuesday, 26 October 2021

Parimal Cosmic Scents Floral Petals Natural Incense

Gosh, this is rich, sweet, and creamy, with baskets full of flower petals. Quite a heady scent. Lots of rose, jasmine, and plumeria. There's fruits in the mix as well, apricots, raspberries, blueberries. This is a lovely incense. Full of life. Full of joy. After the fruits and flowers comes sweet sandalwood, hints of musk and patchouli. A damn fine incense that is full of life and interest. Nice one.

Date: Oct 2021 Score: 37

***

Parimal Mandir

Aargee Imperial Maharani Heena Fragrance (discontinued)

Second review - scroll down for earlier

Solid proper job traditional masala incense created with halmaddi. I love this sort of incense. I've just read my review of 2021 below, and I don't think I can really add much to that. The blub on the back of the packet says: "The Imperial Range has been created with recipes which are more than sixty years old and are mixed together by hand by the same family for generations. The paste is hand rolled onto quality bamboo sticks which are then dried naturally in the early morning sunshine." I like the addition of "early morning" to "sunshine" - gives it added romance and appeal. Good marketing! This is an attractive incense, though is perhaps a tad sombre for my taste, with perhaps a smidge too much halmaddi for me, as it's a bit dry and prickly. There's a smoky element which also holds back on the aesthetic pleasure. The aroma of the heena (or henna) is not quite sweet enough for my taste - it's a bit minerally and cold. It's pleasant, and has a touch of musk and dry grass, but is not really my thing. So, it gets a good mark, but not an enthusiastic one. I think the 41 I gave it last time is about right. I might be inclined to give it 40, but on the whole 41 is fine.

Date: Dec 2023 Score: 41

First review

Attempting to clear my back log. This is an Aargee incense in their Imperial range. The Imperial was Aargee's halmaddi range, and - along with their Stamford Chakra range, is the best incense they ever sold. Sadly no longer distributed as Aargee have since decided to focus on perfumed incense, it is still available in some places, and I recommend swooping them up if you find any as they are top end incense. The full range of six fragrances are available for £1.50 each at KashmirHeadShop (UK only).

The Imperial Range

The Imperial range had names like Kashmir, Maharaja, and Pashmina; names familiar to a UK market, and rich with romantic images of India. To go with Maharaja is this Maharani, the wife of an Indian prince. Heena is a variant spelling of henna, the dye, which is made from the henna tree. Henna has a mild scent of earth, cloves, or green tea, which some like and others don't.

Sticks are 8 inches long, 6 inches are incense. A dry, black masala paste has been hand-rolled onto a hand-cut and pink dyed bamboo splint, and then firmly covered in brown wood dust which carries the scent of the fragrant oils used in the incense. The scent on the stick is warm, honeyed, Indian, perfumed, woody, floral, faintly volatile, attractive, with the warm wool aroma of halmaddi.

This is a gentle and refined masala which is made with a blend of dried masala fragrant ingredients, including halmaddi, and some essential oil. The sticks are reasonably weighty and indulgent. the scent is mainly warm lamb's wool and waxy plumeria (or frangipani) petals, creating an evocative scent redolent of sensual evenings in the early Seventies. This is a moist, enriching, sensual, uplifting, musky, floral, warm, embracing, comforting scent which is more emotional than objective.

Very nice.

Date: Oct 2021 Score: 41

***

Vintage Incense
(Incense no longer available)

Other incense by Aargee

Sagun Radhe Shyam Flora Bathi

Attractive box with a Krishna theme - the name Radhe Shyam is a version of Hare Krishna used to praise and invoke the god Krishna. This is a machine extruded masala incense. It has a pleasant warm, sweet aroma reminiscent of milk and honey, along with the soft, warm tones of lambs wool and frangipani that I get from halmaddi. It is called a "flora" though is quite dry with no essential oils. The "flora" in this case is I feel being used as another name for "masala", such as "herbal" or "natural". It burns well, and gently informs the room, leaving a pleasant, and modestly uplifting sweet scent. This is a very nice everyday incense that I would be happy to get again. Available in the UK from Amazon for £1 for 15 sticks (approx 25g). Sold in India for 20 Rupees.

Date: Oct 2021 Score: 30

***

Flora, Fluxo, and Supreme

Sagun Incense

What's The Best Incense In The World?

Flora, Fluxo, and Supreme incenses

Flora and Fluxo are terms used in Indian incense, generally for masala incense. The oldest use of these terms I am currently aware of is in the successful and popular (mostly in India) Sri Sai Flora Fluxo Incense, which is quite oily, thick, and intense.

I'm currently looking into Flora and Fluxo incense to understand these terms, and to see if there is any difference between when these terms are used, and if so what that difference is. As reported in my review of the Hari Om Fluxo, some Indian agabathi makers seem to regard Fluxo as another term for masala incense, though perhaps fatter and richer? Flora named incenses are normally also masala, though I've had some which were perfume-dipped, such as Moksh Swarna Sai Flora Batti. Most Flora is fat and rich, such as Balaji Red Premium Flora Sticks, though some, such as Sagon Sainath Flora Bathi, can be fairly dry and more like a standard masala. When looking back at my reviews of Flora and Fluxo incense I noticed that Supreme was also a term used for fatter and richer masala incense, such as Gokula Vrindavan Supreme, Happy Hari Meena Supreme, and Satya Supreme. On the whole I am tending to the thought that Flora, Fluxo and Supreme are terms generally used for fatter, richer masala incense, though - as is the way with a number of Indian agabathi makers, the terms are sometimes used just for marketing, as with the Moksh, so could be seen as having no more significance than the word "premium".

Some suggestions given to me by various Indian incense makers are that while there is no defined definition or classification of "flora" and "fluxo" (and other terms such as "durbar", "supreme", "absolute", etc), and that each maker will use the terms as they see fit, that a "flora" will tend be a higher quality masala, or that it will contain more halmaddi, or that it will be softer and more refined. Nobody has suggested that the term refers to floral, though I suspect that it links in with a common term in India for masala incense, and that is the term "natural" as "flora" means plants, which is what a masala or natural incense is made from. The terms "natural" or "herbal" seem to me, based partly on anecdotal evidence of the incense I have burned, partly on trawling through Indian incense company brochures and websites, and partly on the research I have done, to be much more frequently used than "masala", which is more common in the West. My observations are (with rare exceptions such as that of the revived Bangalore incense company ELIF who feel that many incense companies do not make proper "flora" incense these days, and who are attempting to recreate the sorts of quality "flora" incense that the founder of ILIF, their father who died recently, used to make) that "flora" has no more significance than "natural", and is just another description for masala incense, and is used to difference incense made from plants from incense made purely from perfume and charcoal.

"Fluxo" means flow, and one incense maker has suggested that "fluxo" incense is more flexible, while a couple of others have connected it to Earth's energy, derived from plant life. "Fluxo" is not used as much as "flora", and when it is, it is mostly used in incense which is quite obviously copying Sri Sai Flora - the original "fluxo" and the original "flora" (as far as I've been able to discover - if there are earlier examples, please let me know!).

I will add to this as I go along....

I've still not quite pinned down exactly what is meant when Indian incense companies describe their sticks as Flora. There appears to be a sense that it means "premium", and that it is highly likely to be a masala style incense, another term with flexible and variable meaning. The main original sense of a masala is that it uses ground natural ingredients - flowers, plants, herbs, woods, resins, spices - for the fragrant ingredients. However, it appears to have long been acceptable to use fragrant oils to supplement the dried ingredients, and while it may originally have been pure, natural essential oils that were used, these days the fragrant oils may be mostly or entirely fragrance oils - that is the oils may be synthetic, or may be essential oils diluted with a carrier such as DEP. The fragrance in some masala style incense may be mostly or even entirely based on fragrance oils, with the stick given a dusting of wood powder to give the appearance of being a traditional masala stick. I say this without pointing any fingers, and without hard evidence - this is just my speculation based on discussions with Indian incense houses, and my experience with a variety of masala style sticks. Anyway - a Flora stick, from my experience, appears to be a stick that is influenced by Sri Sai Flora Fluxo, and will tend to be weighty and rich with oils. However, I have encountered a number of sticks which are termed Flora, which are not weighty, and which may be quite dry. Discussions with Indian incense houses tends to give me the impression that a Flora is regarded as a traditional incense of some quality, though the specifics beyond that vary, so the main sense appears to be "a premium or quality masala style stick". There are no actual scents or ingredients or production methods which appear to define Flora - it appears to be mainly a designation of quality. The preference would be that it is a hand made masala style stick rich and weighty with fragrant oil, but it is up to each incense house to decide themselves what they term a Flora, and how they make it.

I'm becoming aware that most luxury boxes contain "Flora" style incense, and that most "Flora" style incense is sold in luxury style boxes. There is a relationship. At least in India - when Flora style incense is packaged for a Western reseller such as Happy Hari, TOI, or Bhagwan, they use the same packaging as for the rest of their output.

When reviewing Ramakrishna's Natural Handmade Incense Sticks Sunset I noted that the sticks were rough looking and tended to go out. Flora/fluxo/supreme styles can be like that. The flora masala paste seems to be difficult to roll and dry in a tidy fashion - possibly due to the high liquid content. Some people have said that halmaddi is a substance that attracts moisture, and so a flora stick is wet because of the halmaddi. Halmaddi, like all tree resins, such as frankincense and gum Arabic, are hygroscopic. So is any natural material, such as plants, leaves, flowers, and especially sawdust and charcoal, which are very absorbent, and make up the majority of any incense. That's why it is important to store incense in a dry place. Halmaddi, as with other tree resins, hardens with exposure to the air. That is the purpose of the resin. It is there to protect the tree from losing moisture when it has been cut. Now, we all know that tree resins get hard and brittle - we know about amber, for example; and those of us who have bought halmaddi know that it behaves the same as other tree resins and goes hard. So shut the fuck up already about halmaddi being the thing that is responsible for incense paste being soft or damp. It's not. It's gotta be the liquid scents, the oils and perfumes and whatever else liquid, that is added to the paste that must make it wet and soft and heavy. I really don't know what liquids are added, but my assumption, given that floras are not proportionally more expensive than non-flora masalas, is that they are not pure essential oils. I'm not saying that they don't contain essential oils, but if all that fat dampness is the result of pure essential oils then floras would be massively expensive, and they are not, so the liquid content must come from some other less expensive source, which I suspect is mostly agarbatti oil / DEP. DEP is a plasticiser, like halmaddi and like vanilla crystals (which are always going to be synthetic), it is used to heighten and prolong the fragrance of the incense. Vanilla, for example, has a half-life of 14 hours. Because of its intrusive nature, not many incense houses use vanilla, though, famously, HMS do. Anyway, with a dump load of agarbatti oil in with the essential oil(s), a flora style incense is going to make a bigger impact than a non-flora masala. And we all know that floras are about the impact! Big and heady and sometimes overwhelming. Not subtle. Not delicate. Big juggernauts of Indian incense.

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